WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump commuted the sentence of Ozy Media co-founder Carlos Watson on Friday, just hours before Watson was due to report to prison for a nearly 10-year sentence in a financial conspiracy case.
Watson was convicted last year in a closely watched case that showcased the implosion of an ambitious startup company at a time of turmoil in the media industry. He had been ordered to surrender to prison on Friday.
Watson thanked the president in a statement and blasted the judge who sentenced him as “conflicted and unethical.”
“I am profoundly grateful to President Trump for correcting this grave injustice. His decision reflects his unwavering commitment to fairness and justice for those who have been wrongfully targeted,” Watson said.
Trump has aggressively used his presidential power to commute sentences and issue pardons for people who he believes were treated unfairly by the justice system. The president himself was convicted last year in a case involving hush money payments, part of what he has described as a politically motivated witch hunt against him.
Watson’s commutation was among a string of other acts of clemency revealed by the White House on Friday. They included Trevor Milton, the founder of electric vehicle company Nikola, who had been sentenced to four years for fraudulently exaggerating the potential of his technology and was pardoned; and three entrepreneurs who founded and helped run the cryptocurrency exchange BITMEX, which was ordered to pay a $100 million fine earlier this year after prosecutors said it “willfully flouted U.S. anti-money laundering laws to boost revenue.” They had been sentenced to probation and were also pardoned.
Ozy was founded in 2012 on a premise of providing a fresh, sophisticated-but-not-stuffy take on politics, culture and more — billed as “the new and the next” — while amplifying minority and marginalized voices.
It announced it was shutting down in fall 2021 less than a week after a New York Times column raised questions about the media organization’s claims of millions of viewers and readers while also pointing out a potential case of securities fraud.
Watson was arrested in February 2023 after two of the company’s top executives pleaded guilty to fraud charges.
